NAME

ssh-add -- adds private key identities to the authentication agent

SYNOPSIS

ssh-add [-cDdLlXx] [-tlife] [file...]
ssh-add-spkcs11ssh-add-epkcs11

DESCRIPTION

ssh-add adds private key identities to the authentication agent,
ssh-agent(1). When run without arguments, it adds the files
~/.ssh/id_rsa, ~/.ssh/id_dsa, ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa and ~/.ssh/identity. After
loading a private key, ssh-add will try to load corresponding certificate
information from the filename obtained by appending -cert.pub to the name
of the private key file. Alternative file names can be given on the
command line.
If any file requires a passphrase, ssh-add asks for the passphrase from
the user. The passphrase is read from the user's tty. ssh-add retries
the last passphrase if multiple identity files are given.
The authentication agent must be running and the SSH_AUTH_SOCK
environment variable must contain the name of its socket for ssh-add to
work.
Any keys recorded in the blacklist of known-compromised keys (see
ssh-vulnkey(1)) will be refused.
The options are as follows:
-c Indicates that added identities should be subject to confirmation
before being used for authentication. Confirmation is performed
by the SSH_ASKPASS program mentioned below. Successful
confirmation is signaled by a zero exit status from the
SSH_ASKPASS program, rather than text entered into the requester.
-D Deletes all identities from the agent.
-d Instead of adding identities, removes identities from the agent.
If ssh-add has been run without arguments, the keys for the
default identities will be removed. Otherwise, the argument list
will be interpreted as a list of paths to public key files and
matching keys will be removed from the agent. If no public key
is found at a given path, ssh-add will append .pub and retry.
-epkcs11
Remove keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11.
-L Lists public key parameters of all identities currently
represented by the agent.
-l Lists fingerprints of all identities currently represented by the
agent.
-spkcs11
Add keys provided by the PKCS#11 shared library pkcs11.
-tlife
Set a maximum lifetime when adding identities to an agent. The
lifetime may be specified in seconds or in a time format
specified in sshd_config(5).
-X Unlock the agent.
-x Lock the agent with a password.

ENVIRONMENT

DISPLAY and SSH_ASKPASS
If ssh-add needs a passphrase, it will read the passphrase from
the current terminal if it was run from a terminal. If ssh-add
does not have a terminal associated with it but DISPLAY and
SSH_ASKPASS are set, it will execute the program specified by
SSH_ASKPASS and open an X11 window to read the passphrase. This
is particularly useful when calling ssh-add from a .xsession or
related script. (Note that on some machines it may be necessary
to redirect the input from /dev/null to make this work.)
SSH_AUTH_SOCK
Identifies the path of a UNIX-domain socket used to communicate
with the agent.

FILES

~/.ssh/identity
Contains the protocol version 1 RSA authentication identity of
the user.
~/.ssh/id_dsa
Contains the protocol version 2 DSA authentication identity of
the user.
~/.ssh/id_ecdsa
Contains the protocol version 2 ECDSA authentication identity of
the user.
~/.ssh/id_rsa
Contains the protocol version 2 RSA authentication identity of
the user.
Identity files should not be readable by anyone but the user. Note that
ssh-add ignores identity files if they are accessible by others.

EXITSTATUS

Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if the specified command fails, and 2 if
ssh-add is unable to contact the authentication agent.

SEEALSO

AUTHORS

OpenSSH is a derivative of the original and free ssh 1.2.12 release by
Tatu Ylonen. Aaron Campbell, Bob Beck, Markus Friedl, Niels Provos, Theo
de Raadt and Dug Song removed many bugs, re-added newer features and
created OpenSSH. Markus Friedl contributed the support for SSH protocol
versions 1.5 and 2.0.